Past Midnight (27 page)

Al looked at him as if he were living in a fairyland.

“I did some searches, too,” Dominic said. “I don’t see anything on any forums or boards about any problems with them.”

Al raised a brow, his respect rising. “Good job, bro.”

He’d moved from
dude
to
bro
. He figured that was a plus.

“What about people working from home computers?”

“Me, my wife, Yvonne, Bree, Atul, Cam, we all do stuff from home. You think one of those computers could be infected?”

“Searching for answers. Our motto: no stone unturned.”

Dominic was surprised the motto wasn’t in some geek-speak metaphor. “We can look into that next.”

“Okay, back to the diagnostic grind.”

By late afternoon, Al had cleared all the computers not in use, plus Cam’s and Dominic’s. Now he needed access to those in manufacturing, then Erin’s and Bree’s.

Fists on Dominic’s desk, Al leaned forward. “You have to tell your wife she needs to give up her computer,” he whispered conspiratorially. “
I
ain’t gonna tell her.”

Had Erin been terrorizing the help?

“You can have it in the morning. She can work from home for a bit.” He paused. “So everything’s good so far?”

Al flattened his lips and shook his head. “Nothing yet. Your protection software’s good, but someone in the know, like me”—he put a hand to his chest—“could get through it. But that’s why I can ferret out any baddies. I cleaned everyone up, too, so you should be running more efficiently.” Then he hooked a finger over his shoulder. “The one in there,” he indicated the office Atul and Cam shared, “don’t know how that chick works. No amount of optimizing is gonna do any good. It’s way out of date for what she’s doing, dude.”

Ah, he was
dude
again. A notch down. Dominic made a mental note to talk to Cam about her computer. She was quiet, didn’t complain, and lived with what she was given. Jesus, people needed to speak up for themselves.

“Fine, see you tomorrow,” he told Al.

On the one hand, it was good Al hadn’t found anything. On the other, it still left the door open to their leak coming from inside.

PARKING IN THE ONLY AVAILABLE SPACE A COUPLE OF SHOPS DOWN from the coffeehouse, Erin climbed out of her car. Of course, she should have saved herself the parking woes and gotten the chai at the place next to DKG, but she’d wanted the hot drink for the drive in.

It was eleven on Tuesday, and Dominic had kicked her out of her office for most of the morning, the last shipping week of the year, for God’s sake. And it was a short week at that. She was trying,
really
trying not to be pissed about the whole thing. After all, he’d given her a perfect weekend away from home, just what she’d needed exactly when she’d needed it. So no, she would
not
get mad. Not today.

A man held the door of the coffee shop open for her, and damn if the line inside wasn’t horrendous. You couldn’t fool her and say the economy was bad when people still paid close to four dollars for a coffee drink. She idly thanked the man.

“Laura?”

For a moment, she didn’t realize he was talking to her. Then . . . oh my God. That knowing smile. Holy shit. It was Shane.

Her immediate reaction was to run, but she stopped herself. She was in a public place. He couldn’t do anything.

He fell in line behind her. “Did you enjoy your weekend surprise?”

See, that’s why you didn’t get kinky and fool around with someone who lived or worked nearby. Sure it was fun and sexy when you were out of town and your husband was egging you on. But then you run into the man back home.
Without
your husband.

Her face heated. What the heck was she supposed to say? “Umm” was all that came out.

She suddenly felt him too close behind her. “Yeah,” he said softly. “That good. Leaves you feeling kinda speechless.”

She almost jumped away. God. What if someone she knew saw them? They’d think she was having an affair. Yet he smelled like cloves, like spice and Christmas cheer, and his voice at her ear made her wet. She moved forward in line, her heart pounding, her nipples brutally hard against her jacket.

He was right there again, unnervingly close. “Next time I want to be the one fucking you while he’s jerking off.” His voice seemed to boom out the damning words, yet she knew they couldn’t have made it farther than the two inches to her ear.

She could feel it, his cock entering her, his fingers on her nipples, his tongue on her pussy, licking, sucking, making her come, making her scream, and Dominic whispering how sexy she looked with another man’s cock in her.

She felt faint with need. She was almost sick with it.

“There will be no next time,” she whispered harshly.

Shane laughed softly. He heard the lie.

Suddenly she broke out of line. “I forgot something I have to do,” she said, then practically ran for the door.

In her car, she started the engine, rammed the gear into reverse and backed out. Leaving the parking lot, her tires squealed. A block away, she pulled into a mini-mall and let the car idle.

Their marriage was totally messed up. They couldn’t talk. When they tried, they fought. Her first instinct was always to get pissed at him; she had to think hard in order to control it. As far as sex, their kinkiness was growing, their limits expanding. It wasn’t normal. In fact, after seeing Shane in the coffee shop, it was starting to freak her out. What would people
think
if they knew what she and Dominic had been up to?

Yet, the next time Dominic offered her a man, Erin knew she was ripe for fucking him while her husband watched. It could be Shane. It could be Winter. It could be someone else.

She couldn’t let Dominic know. He’d arrange it at the snap of his fingers. Once they’d done it, there would be no going back. Everything would change.

She laughed, the sound without an ounce of humor. What was she thinking? Everything had changed a year ago when she lost Jay. He was gone forever and they could
never
go back.

Really, all they had left was fighting or kinky sex.

 

 

SOMETHING WAS WRONG; DOMINIC HAD NO CLUE WHAT. ERIN SAT at her desk. She talked to her monitor instead of him. “And my computer was fine?”

“It was fine,” Dominic confirmed.

Her back was ramrod straight. “Good.”

“Bree’s was fine, too.”

She finally looked at him. “That’s good news.”

He realized that Bree was at the top of her suspect list, and Erin probably hated herself for the disloyalty. “We should have the home computers checked, too,” he added.

She turned back to her screen. “Fine.” She flexed her fingers as if she was barely restraining herself from wrapping them around his neck, and her knuckles cracked. “Everyone can bring their laptop in rather than sending that kid out.”

Al might look like a kid, but he knew his stuff.

Then suddenly
the kid
was standing in her office. “Dudes,” he said. “I got a massive brain implosion.”

Was that a good thing?

“What if it’s as simple as someone accessing the system through a valid user ID that’s been hacked?”

“What do you mean?” Erin’s mascara had smudged beneath her eyes as if she’d been rubbing them, and the dark circles were deeper than usual.

“There’ll be a log of every user. Unless he or she back-doored it somehow, the user log will show it.” Al hunched forward, his eyes gleaming. “We can match the user ID with the IP addresses and see what kind of fallout we get.”

“I still don’t get it,” Erin said.

But Dominic did. “If someone hacked in, retrieved a user ID, then started using it from another IP address, that IP won’t match the valid user ID. And we can detect the port of entry into our system.”

“Bingo.” Al grinned. “Unless they’re really clever and wiped the trail.”

“It’s worth a try.” Dominic felt a slight measure of relief. Another avenue to investigate that didn’t finger one of his own people.

“You’ll have to talk to your system techs and get me authorization to access the logs.” Al shot him with a pointed finger. “Can you handle that, dude?”

“Yeah. I’ll call them.”

“Awesome. I’ll finish scanning and optimizing the other computers first.”

“How much is this going to cost, Dominic?” Erin asked after Al sauntered out the door.

Erin was all about the money, but it was his people that gave him the bigger headache. He didn’t want to believe someone in his group would sell their proprietary information.

“I don’t care how much.” He spread his hands. “We need to put the issue to rest.”

“It doesn’t put everything to rest. We still have the patent to worry about.”

Garland Brooks was blowing smoke. He wanted money for nothing. Dominic wasn’t going to let that asshole win no matter how much it cost. He leaned his fists on her desk. “Stop worrying all the time.”

She pursed her lips. “Somebody has to.”

He wanted to throw his hands in the air. He did his own worrying; she just never gave him credit for it.

“Dominic . . .” She didn’t go on. And she wasn’t looking him in the eye.

Whatever she wanted to say had nothing to do with the patent or the computers. “What?”

She waited a beat, staring at him. “Nothing.” She turned back to her keyboard.

Dominic wanted to pound something. Especially after the great weekend they’d had. He hated unfinished sentences, stuff hanging in the air between them, but it was the way they lived these days, everything unsaid. He raised his hands in defeat and backed out. “Fine. Whatever.”

Damn. She was doing it again, taking him on that roller-coaster ride, fucking fantastic sex, then shutting him out. He needed something to shake her up, put her off balance again, right back into the zone he’d had her in over the weekend, where she’d do whatever he wanted.

They had the three-day weekend ahead of them. He’d have to come up with something to top Friday night in the hot tub with Shane.

EVERYONE WAS SO TENSE, BREE COULD FEEL IT LIKE COLD FINGERS on her skin. Okay, not everyone, just Erin and Dominic and that geek they’d brought in.

She stretched her arms over her head, reaching with her fingertips, one hand, then the other, working the kinks out. She’d been sitting at the computer too long without moving.

She had to tell Erin. She couldn’t stand it anymore. There was no way out of it, none at all. Things were coming to a head. But God, she couldn’t even begin to say the words.

Of course, there
was
another way out. She could ignore all the calls. Pretend. But the calls would just keep coming, pushing, prodding, driving her crazy.

She strode purposefully to the door of her office. She’d tell Erin. She had to. She owed it to her.

Bree stopped before she made it out the door.

Erin would ask all sorts of questions that Bree couldn’t face answering.

The phone rang on the desk. She ignored it. Immediately afterward, her cell phone started to ring. She closed her eyes and ignored that, too. She knew who it was. Only one person would move immediately from her work line to her cell phone, and Bree didn’t want to talk to her. She could ignore those calls for a few more days. Then, maybe it would all go away.

God help her, that was the worst thought of all.

 

 

TWO DAYS LATER, THE WEATHER HAD TAKEN A RAPID TURN, FROM sunny but cold, to stormy and even colder. The forecasters were predicting snow in the Santa Cruz Mountains overnight. Rain beat against the window of Erin’s office.

Her mind itched to do something, anything about the spy or the mole or the hacker or whatever you wanted to call the person who’d given their numbers to WEU. Letting some computer whiz pour over their equipment searching for viruses or clues made her feel helpless. Dominic was running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to prove the leak was an outsider. They’d barely spoken over the last couple of days just so they could avoid the fight about it.

Swear to God, she hated to think it was one of her people, but wasn’t the simplest answer the correct one? Like cops looking to the family when there’s a murder. The most logical choices were Yvonne, who had been with them the longest and knew shipping numbers inside and out, or Bree, who had all their financial data at her fingertips. Sure, Erin hated to think it, but the suspicions hounded her regardless.

She clacked away on the keyboard, queuing up the morning’s shipments even as her mind whirled around in circles. Today was the deadline, actually this morning was, because she intended to let everyone go after lunch just as she had last week. She’d pulled in as many shipments from next week as she could, which would give her a week’s jump on cash receipts in January.

She punched a button on her phone.